This Background is intended to provide the basic context of this patent application and it is not intended to describe a specific problem to be solved.
Digital media players are in common use among a broad base of users. Presently, streaming digital media is available over both wireless and wired networks and may be displayed on cellular telephones and other portable media devices. Media players may send and receive content over a variety of data networks including cell-based and isochronous networks. The IEEE 802 standard family describes various local and wide-area networks (LAN and WAN, respectively) that carry variable-sized packets encoding digital media. The 802 standard encompasses protocols for both wired (e.g., 802.3, or Ethernet) and wireless (e.g., 802.11, or “WiFi”) networks. The 802.11 standard describes the protocols used to transfer data when a device is connected to a wireless network.
The station is the most basic component of the wireless network and is any device that contains the functionality of the 802.11 standard and a connection to the wireless media. Typically the 802.11 functions are implemented in the hardware and software of a network interface card (NIC). A station could be a media player, a laptop PC, handheld device, or an Access Point. Stations may be mobile, portable, or stationary and all stations support the 802.11 station services of authentication, de-authentication, privacy, and data delivery. A collection of any number of stations is called a Basic Service Set (BSS).
To connect to a network, devices typically perform an authentication and association process. Before communicating any data, clients and access points must establish a relationship, or association. Typically, however, only after association may devices exchange data. In the Infrastructure Basic Service Set, clients first associate with an access point. However, in an ad-hoc topology, devices must associate with other devices. To associate, the communicating devices exchange messages called management frames. All wireless devices transmit a beacon management frame at a fixed interval and a client listens for beacon messages to identify the devices within range. The client then selects the BSS to join based on the information contained in the management frame. A client may also send a probe request management frame to find an access point affiliated with a desired network name. After identifying an access point, the client and the access point perform a mutual authentication by exchanging several management frames as part of the process. To become authenticated and associated, the client sends an association request frame, the access point responds with an association response frame, and the process is complete.
A media player acting as a client or station must accomplish the similar authentication and association steps to communicate on the network. However, a media player user may only wish to connect and communicate with compatible or similar media players. A media player user may, therefore, have only a limited indication of the device type and no indication of the type or content of the device's data until the connection process is complete. In addition, constantly keeping the communication function operating may be inefficient and may waste energy as broadcasts of interest to the receiver may only occur during a few limited windows of time.